June 25, 2009

By By Scott Roxborough, L.A.

A Dutch entertainment industry group has demanded Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay be shut down in the Netherlands and says Pirate Bay founders have been sent their court summons via Twitter and Facebook.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN said it used the social networking sites to deliver the court summons as it was unable to pinpoint the exact location of Pirate Bay founders Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. A lawyer for BREIN said they are expected to appear in court in Amsterdam on July 21.

In April, a Swedish district court found the three, along with Carl Lundstrom, guilty of assisting copyright infringement and sentenced them to 1 year in prison and some $3.8 million in fines. The men are appealing. The Swedish court of appeals this week began deliberating on the defendants' claim that the presiding judge in the district court was biased because he belonged to several anti-piracy groups.

Lundstrom is not named in the Dutch suit.

Swedish news agency TT reached Neij in Bangkok, Thailand, where he currently lives, but he claimed he had not seen any court summons.

"I have Twitter and Facebook accounts, but I haven't seen anything about it," he said.

The Pirate Bay has been targeted by anti-piracy groups in other countries, including Italy and Norway.

So far, the legal assaults have not shut down the hugely-popular site, which posts links to films, TV shows and software downloads, many of them copyright-protected works.

-- Nielsen Business Media

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